I just cannot for the life of me understand why the developer spends years getting the game balance right in Stellaris and basically making everyone happy, only to toss it all in the trash and ruin the game for absolutely no reason. No one asked for these changes. And yet instead of making things people have asked for (such as internal politics), the devs are wasting a year of development time on just breaking things. AGAIN. It took several years for the game to recover from the previous time the devs decided to break everything for no reason (2.2), and it looks like it may take just as long this time, if you look at how poorly thought out all the new systems are and how incapable the poor AI is at playing now. We've been through this song and dance enough times to know it's not worth it, even if the game eventually ends up as good as it was before again. The right move is to cut their losses and cancel most of these changes, but game devs never do that no matter how obvious the upcoming disaster is.
At least the empire timeline is cool, even if it's marred by sharing the screen with that horrible focus system.
It is frustrating to see a system that works scrapped for something new and untested.
Linking essential performance improvements to an experimental overhaul makes it very hard to reverse course when problems are discovered.
(and this is by design. If you want to force through an unpopular change you link it to something universally popular like performance improvements).
I'm used to it by now. I'll miss 3.14 just like I miss 1.9. Miss the "old districts" just like I miss tiles, adjacency, warpdrive, wormhole stations, big defence platforms etc.
Personally I'd have thrown zones out after seeing the first mock-ups, it feels like a downgrade or a rehash of 2.2 plans for planetary infrastructure.
Mock-ups in Stellaris are usually better than the real thing, the 2.2 "
Planetary Rework (part 1 of 4)" mock-ups had planetary features not hidden in a sub-menu, Luxury goods and Jobs per X infrastructure, with infrastructure coming from City districts... all eventually changed.
The "jobs per X infrastructure" was mechanically similar to this beta's zones+districts and was discarded for the same reasons zones will struggle, huge and unpredictable shifts in jobs, death-spirals, not enough UI feedback of consequences of player actions. The failure was the reason why we eventually had industry districts and jop output modifiers instead in 3.14, even if it's an interesting idea in theory it doesn't work well in practice. The 2.2
New Economy System changes were also linked to performance improvements "3: The new system should improve performance". It doesn't always work out as intended.
...but even if I can see the exact same problems repeating again I can't do anything to stop it, or to stop "
platform decay" in general. You just have to make the most of what you are given.
My opinion:
v3.14.15 wasn't in a too bad state. Planets with some quality of life issues - the need to swap tabs, too many clicks, key information hidden in tooltips.
v4.0 looks like it'll be worse - more tabs, more clicks, more info hidden in tooltips... while also introducing lots of bugs and balance issues for the next few years.
If I could upgrade v3.14 planet UI:
1. Show job output/modifiers on the district, like +0% and 4 minerals per job vs +45% and 5.8 minerals per job (and similar QOL changes)
2. Important Planetary features more visible, doorway/vents easy to see at a glance (squeeze more info into the planet summary UI)
3. Add Wildcard district slots for more district choices, and flexibility for future DLC/reworks (future-proof UI designed for easy customisation and modding)
4. Move pop traits from being per-job/on-growth to per-planet or empire-wide (Reduce job calculations for performance, no need for workforce)
5. Show Population Carrying Capacity graph, and the graph made correct (easier to fill Ringworlds)
6. Balance the migration/emmigration numbers (to replace base growth on colonies with migration without needing to add unemployment/civilians)
7. Show ratio of species present visually on the summary, not just the job section (see your empire species more often)
So... almost nothing that I would change is going to be part of 4.0, at least not in the way I'd want. But there will always be some good thing to celebrate.
Complaining hasn't worked in the past and is unlikely to work this time. 4.0 is coming no matter what, but at least it should improve performance and make the game feel fresh again. And I suppose I can try to be happy squashing some bugs and hopefully cutting down how many years it will take to get the game back in a polished state.
